MONTMELO, Spain -- A late lap from Lewis Hamilton offered a tantilising glimpse of what qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix could look like, with Ferrari and Mercedes' best times split by a fraction of a second.
The common consensus which had formed over the previous seven days had been that Ferrari held the advantage, with a perfect start to testing and a series of impressive times throughout the two weeks the teams have been at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya. Sebastian Vettel's 1:16.221 was the quickest mark set throughout the entirety of testing, just 0.01s quicker than Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc had set on Thursday while Mercedes focused on longer runs and a red-flag disrupted race simulation.